/*
 * $Header: /home/jerenkrantz/tmp/commons/commons-convert/cvs/home/cvs/jakarta-commons//httpclient/src/java/org/apache/commons/httpclient/methods/RequestEntity.java,v 1.4 2004/05/17 21:46:03 olegk Exp $
 * $Revision: 480424 $
 * $Date: 2006-11-29 06:56:49 +0100 (Wed, 29 Nov 2006) $
 *
 * ====================================================================
 *
 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 *  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 *  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 *  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 *  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 *  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 * ====================================================================
 *
 * This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
 * individuals on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation.  For more
 * information on the Apache Software Foundation, please see
 * <http://www.apache.org/>.
 *
 */

package org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;

/**
 * @since 3.0
 */
public interface RequestEntity {

	/**
	 * Tests if {@link #writeRequest(OutputStream)} can be called more than
	 * once.
	 * 
	 * @return <tt>true</tt> if the entity can be written to
	 *         {@link OutputStream} more than once, <tt>false</tt> otherwise.
	 */
	boolean isRepeatable();

	/**
	 * Writes the request entity to the given stream.
	 * 
	 * @param out
	 * @throws IOException
	 */
	void writeRequest(OutputStream out) throws IOException;

	/**
	 * Gets the request entity's length. This method should return a
	 * non-negative value if the content length is known or a negative value if
	 * it is not. In the latter case the
	 * {@link org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.EntityEnclosingMethod} will
	 * use chunk encoding to transmit the request entity.
	 * 
	 * @return a non-negative value when content length is known or a negative
	 *         value when content length is not known
	 */
	long getContentLength();

	/**
	 * Gets the entity's content type. This content type will be used as the
	 * value for the "Content-Type" header.
	 * 
	 * @return the entity's content type
	 * @see org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethod#setRequestHeader(String,
	 *      String)
	 */
	String getContentType();

}
